What Is the Metaverse?
Is it just hype? Or is it here to stay?
Probably you heard in the news that Facebook is changing its name to Meta and that is switching its main focus from Facebook and Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, virtual worlds and cryptocurrency.
Back in 2003, Linden Lab released Second Life, an online community where users can join for free, create their avatars, explore the virtual world and do transactions using the platform currency: the Linden Dollar.
In 2013 it reached around 1 million regular users, but since then it stabilised and started to decline. However, its founder Philip Rosedale has returned to the same company he founded back in 1999 and will guide the project so it can compete with other metaverses.
So what is a metaverse?
Metaverse can be defined as a virtual reality space where users can interact with each other. Unlike a game, there are no objectives and it can’t be paused. If a user joins the metaverse one day and joins again 3 days after, a lot of things will have happened while the user was offline, so we could consider the metaverse like a parallel world.
Why it has become so popular?
While the concept is not new, it is becoming increasingly popular because many of these metaverses use cryptocurrencies and blockchain to run them.
For example, in Decentraland, MANA token is the official cryptocurrency, which can not only be used in the platform, but also exchanged for fiat money (dollars, euros, etc).
Most metaverses also offer users the possibility of buying virtual real estate and land, which are NFT’s that can be bought using cryptocurrency. Some of these lands are more expensive than real ones.
Big companies are also dipping their toes into the metaverse, like Walmart, Adidas, Nike, Gucci or Samsung.
We don’t know what the future holds, but it seems like metaverses are here to stay and that soon we’ll all have some interactions with them.
What are your thoughts on the metaverse? Have you tried it already? Let me know in the comments.
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